31 August 2008

"There's a lot more leniency and a lot less work in credit recovery," says a teacher at one middle-of-the-pack Toronto school. "Kids know that, if they fail, they can do the class again in six weeks."

Credit recovery is also a convenient way for some teachers to shuffle the losers out of their hair.

"It has turned into a huge program here," says the teacher, who, like most, won't speak on the record for fear of professional consequences.

In Dalton McSlippery's Ontario... there's no such thing as failing.

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"I believe this approach to teaching emphasizes the child's self-esteem ahead of other trivial matters, such as actually learning."

"That way Ontario's next generation of underachievers can gaze proudly into the fry vat."

**********

RELATED: Failing and disappearing

Thirteen schools closed in Ontario in 2008, but 77 schools are on a list recommended for closing. Most of them will be gone in June, Ms. Kidder predicted. Canada is experiencing steady long-term decline in enrolment.

The number of school-aged children dropped to 5.2 million in 2005-06, down 3 per cent from 1999.

Local school authorities and experts in most provinces say the decline will continue through 2013 and beyond. With little national debate, the country is walking into an irreversible process that will leave dozens of communities in tatters, Ms. Kidder said.

"We have to decide as a society whether we're going to say, 'Oh well' and just keep emptying all these parts of the country," she said.

Meetings with NDP Leader Jack Layton and the Bloc's Gilles Duceppe have so far followed a similar script: the opposition leaders emerged to say Mr. Harper is intent on breaking his promise not to dissolve Parliament before October 2009 and the prime minister's spokesman emerge to insist the opposition is intent on paralyzing Parliament.

Mr. Dion will sit down with the prime minister despite asserting that he had no time in his schedule before September 9th.

New York City's Department of Health and Human Hygiene said the report is the "most precise estimate yet" of annual infections of the HIV virus in New York City.

The report says in 2006, nearly 4,800 New Yorkers contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. This means there were 72 new infections per 100,000 people. That number is three times higher than the national rate, in which the incidence of new infection is 23 per 100,000 people.

Overall, an estimated 100,000 New Yorkers are known to be HIV positive.

-- TORONTO -- Four teenagers are in hospital with minor injuries after a shooting outside a house party at an apartment building in the city’s west end. Police were called to a home on Jane St near Lawrence Ave W. just before 10 p.m. Friday night, said Staff Sgt Bob Skinner.

The victims, ranging from 15 to 19 years old, all sustained non-life threatening shotgun wounds to the legs. They were found at the back of an apartment building and transported to local hospitals for treatment.

“The victims themselves and the crowd are being un-cooperative and as such there are no leads,” Skinner said. Skinner added that the victims are known to police.

29 August 2008

So, Charlie... what you're saying is... the Inspectors at Maple Leaf Foods... were totally unqualified alcoholics who got their jobs because their dad was the boss?

-- OTTAWA -- The Mayor of Walkerton, Ont. is calling for a public inquiry into the outbreak of listeria, saying he cannot believe lessons failed to be learned from the tainted water tragedy that killed seven people in May 2000.

Mayor Charlie Bagnato released a statement today decrying the current outbreak as “outrageous” and noting that some of the cabinet ministers who were in the Ontario government in 2000 are now in the federal cabinet.

"Mayor Bagnato knows a lot about the importance of a trustworthy and reliable operator. In 2000, contaminated water killed seven people and sickened more than 2,300."

"After the tragedy, Walkerton disbanded its public utilities commission, shed the dishonest and inept Koebel brothers and handed operations over to Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA), the Crown-owned agency that operates water or wastewater facilities for more than 200 municipalities across the province."

-- MONTREAL -- A Montreal newspaper is reporting that a former cabinet minister in charge of the federal program linked to the sponsorship scandal has bought a vineyard in Quebec's Eastern Townships with a government loan of more than $500,000.

Montreal La Presse reports today that the purchase of the Dunham vineyard was registered last Friday in the Quebec Land Registry for $733,687. The loan from Farm Credit Canada, a federal crown corporation, was for $550,000.

"...for me throwing him out, and is upset that I haven't just forgiven him, however, the information I have received, is - as hard as it is - I need to be resolute in my message that what he has done is abhorrent and unacceptable..."

-- TORONTO -- As detectives search for the family of a man whose decomposing body was discovered in a recycling bin earlier this week, a crack-addicted pregnant woman remains in custody charged with his slaying.

The final shot for the Canadian National Recreation Association Gun Club's shooting range in Union Station was fired Wednesday night --the fatal round coming from Toronto Mayor David Miller.

Are you feeling safer today with the eviction and closure of this pistol range? Or did you even know it was there, since nothing terrible happened there in the eight decades when it was a CN-owned property and then later when it was turned over to the municipality?

Unfortunately for the 130 members who had never had an incident or accident in 81 years, Miller found out they were tucked away on the seventh floor and that was the end of them.

"It's a crime," said club president Tom Bradbeer, a member since 1982. "We feel very sad."

And the reality here is, this takes not a single illegal gun out of circulation. Toronto's actual pistol-packin' thugs will continue their reign of terror unabated.

Shutting down these totally law-abiding citizens is simply political theatre designed to cast the Mayor as a crime-fighter.

And what villains did his blondeness dispatch on this august occasion?

He described a sombre scene of about 20 defeated members gathering around telling stories and each taking a final shot in the range that helped train everyone from police officers to Olympians like Avianna Chao, just back from Beijing.

"There were some speeches," Bradbeer said. "We cleaned out the filing cabinets. When we left, the lock codes were changed and we can no longer get in any more."

Michael Rubin, a lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, published an article in The Washington Post on Tuesday in which he surveys Biden's statements and positions concerning Iran.

From his survey it emerges that for more than a decade now Biden's attitude toward the Islamic Republic has been soft and conciliatory.

It is no wonder that the senator and soon to be Democratic candidate for the vice presidency is the favorite senior American politician of the regime in Tehran.

Ayatollah Mohammed Kashani, who is close to the spiritual leader Ali Khamenei, praised Biden for his opposition to the military option and said, in a sermon in Tehran in December 2007, "The senator said rightly that Israel was not able to suppress Hezbollah in Lebanon, so how can the United States deal face to face with a nation of 70 million?"

As is the custom, the cleric's words were greeted by his audience with cries of "Death to America."

McCain's campaign dubbed the stage constructed for the evening the "Temple of Obama," and hoped the rally would strengthen their efforts to portray Obama as a political celebrity out of touch with ordinary voters.

These are the people to whom Insite really matters; not the drug addicts themselves, but the bureaucrats and politicians who will have smaller empires if Insite is closed.

They are selling Insite to the public on the basis that harm reduction represents the compassionate way to deal with addiction.

They are the empathy industry.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS: A question for Stephane Dion

"My 17 year old son has been charged with trafficking crack cocaine..."

And, Roblaw continues...

"The resounding advice, from former addicts, dealers and their families, was you have to force them to hit rock bottom before they will get it."

"As hard as it was, my son was out of the home, was hiring his own lawyer (even though I am a lawyer with criminal lawyers in my office) and while I have told him I love him, I have told him he is not welcome in my home until he has shown that he has turned his life around."

-- TORONTO -- The University of Toronto will launch Canada's first graduate program in sexual diversity studies this fall, allowing students to pursue master's and PhD programs focused on the sexual aspect of everything from pulp fiction to public health.

The graduate degrees will be collaborative programs with other faculties, meaning that students apply through departments such as history or law, but their thesis topics are approved through the Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies.

The research interests of this year's grad students range from queer theatre in Canada to the homoerotics of militarism and peace activism.

Ah, yes... worthy subjects all.

So, what exactly does one do with a doctorate in... "Let's get it on?"

Paul Halferty, 34, is in the fifth year of his PhD at U of T's drama centre, but will enter the collaborative program this year to continue his research in queer theatre.

Mr. Halferty believes his focus on sexuality will help him find a teaching job at a university.

"Everything I learned in eight years as president … has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job," Mr. Clinton said to a wildly waving sea of American flags.

**********

RELATED: Everybody just settle down...

...Hillary knows what's best for you too.

Earlier in the day, Mrs Clinton earlier halted a roll call vote - in which each state, in alphabetical order, declares how many votes were cast for each candidate in the primaries - to call for Mr Obama's nomination by voice vote.

Many in the crowd shouted back "No!" as she released them, but Mrs Clinton urged them to put the party first.

The roll call for the nomination included Mrs Clinton's name in a bid to placate her disappointed supporters.

Notes for an Address by the Honourable Robert Nicholson Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform

Excerpt:

* Mr. Speaker, some Opposition members had concerns that this bill is illusory in that the Prime Minister can call an election at any point up until the fixed date for the election.

* However, Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has to retain his prerogative to advise dissolution to allow for situations when the government loses the confidence of the House.

* This is a fundamental principle of our system of responsible government.

* Moreover, if the bill were to indicate that the Prime Minister could only advise dissolution in the event of a loss of confidence, it would have to define ‘confidence’ and the dissolution of the House of Commons would be justiciable in the courts – something that we certainly do not want.

(h/t reader rich)

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Aw come on, everyone knows the Prime Minister is breaking the law. The Liberal Party says so, and they would never, ever mislead people - remember when they warned us that Harper was going to put soldiers in our cities with guns, they were right about that, right?"

27 August 2008

Tourism is a tough sell in Iraq, however, because there are still suicide attacks that kill dozens and infrastructure is weak. But since insurgent attacks and sectarian bloodshed have declined over the past year, Iraqis are venturing outside their homes.

-- Financial Post -- The most overblown comments have come from Liberal leader Stephane Dion, who has suggested that the Maple Leaf situation reflects that of the tainted water tragedy at Walkerton eight years ago, when seven died and several thousand became sick.

Mr. Dion pointed out that Mr. Clement was part of the Mike Harris Ontario government that was allegedly "partly" to blame for the deaths at Walkerton.

The Liberal leader went on to accuse the federal Conservatives of "wanting to take the same deregulation approach to food."

Of course, Steffi... as per usual... is talkin' outta his ass.

The linking of Walkerton to deregulation is totally inaccurate.

The inquiry into Walkerton fingered lazy, unqualified and incompetent government employees. Private testing was one of the few parts of the system that worked.

-- TORONTO -- Canada's food inspection system, under scrutiny amid a massive meat recall and a listeriosis outbreak that's killed at least five people, was absolved of blame Wednesday by the president of embattled meat giant Maple Leaf Foods and defended by the minister of agriculture.

Michael McCain - the Maple Leaf chief executive whose abject apology has been playing in television commercials across Canada for nearly a week - said both the recall and the responsibility for fixing it are for his company to bear alone.

A Quebec think-tank with a blue-chip business board of directors has waded into one of the most controversial issues in Canadian politics by coming out in favour of bulk water exports.

“Large-scale exports of fresh water would be a wealth-creating idea for Quebec and for Canada as a whole,” the Montreal Economic Institute said Wednesday. “It is urgent to look seriously at developing our blue gold.”

Indeed, Quebec could generate $65-billion a year in gross revenue if it were to export 10 per cent of the one trillion cubic metres of “renewable fresh water” available to it each year, according to an MEI research paper.

The convention has also zeroed in on the two critical demographics: working-class voters and women, which make up a large percentage of the undecided voters and were the core groups supporting Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

In 2004, women and Latinos were the key deciders of the election, with large numbers of older women switching from John Kerry to President Bush in the last month because of concerns about national security.

They are likely to decide the election again, and Mr. McCain is investing heavily in the security argument even as the economy has been steadily rising as job No. 1 for the next president.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president.

Once Obama speaks, confetti will rain down on him and fireworks will be fired off from locations around the stadium wall.

This sorta puts me in mind of those gory mock crucifixions the media trots out every year around Easter.

A devout Muslim has been found guilty of child cruelty after forcing two boys to beat themselves during a religious ceremony, in an unprecedented case.

The jury at Manchester Crown Court found 44-year-old Syed Mustafa Zaidi guilty of two counts of child cruelty. The boys, aged 13 and 15, were forced to beat themselves with a zanjeer whip, with five curved blades.

... to the Walmart superstore in Belleville to get school supplies for the boy... and as usual...there were 3 cashiers manning the almost 30 checkout stations.

I mean, why do they even put in more than three stations if they don't intend to ever use them? It's like they're saying... "Obviously, with a few more minimum-wage scanner jockeys, we could speed this process up... but you're just not important enough to us to do it."

“A whopping 86 per cent of participants polled admitted to walking out of a store frustrated with having waited too long for service,” said Maritz, which advises companies on how to improve their performance.

Now I'm not sure why anyone would need to pay a consulting firm to figure out that people don't actually look forward to standing in long lines... but I won't be going back there anytime soon.

And don't even start about the self-checkout stations. I got suckered into doing that over at Home Depot and after the scanner couldn't read the sku numbers off the labels... the printer wasn't able to manufacture a receipt.

-- BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA -- A school in northern Australia will review a ban on cartwheels, handstands and other gymnastic tumbles in the playground after a community backlash, the state education department said Wednesday.

Kylie Buschgens said her 10-year-old daughter had been punished for doing cartwheels, even on the grass, after students were told of the ban at a recent assembly.

Fortunately, this one may get nipped in the bud.

On Tuesday, Education Minister Rod Welford suggested the school should overturn its decision.

“I think the decision by the principal in Townsville the other day was prompted by the fact that increasingly we as a community are wrapping our children in cotton wool,” Mr. Welford said. “I think our generation of parents are mollycoddling their children.”

26 August 2008

Maybe picking on members of the Olympic shooting team... isn't gonna solve Toronto's problems after all...

Cops now believe he'd been lying there for hours before a passerby stumbled onto his lifeless body.

But beyond figuring out who killed him and why, they have an equally perplexing question: how did a man known to hang out almost exclusively in the downtown core wind up in a place he likely never even knew about?

And it's not like we're talking about a single problem area.

Homicide detectives are investigating the possible murder of a man found on the front lawn of a house in the city’s east-end this morning.

The man, who has not been identified, was found with severe injuries to his body when police arrived at the scene on Bon Echo Court, Scarborough about 7 a.m.

And there's a lot of problems that have nothing to do with guns at all.

A Toronto man is facing charges after a pair of stabbings in two separate city locations, police said today.

Mauricio Antonio Delgado-Cruz, 37, allegedly sliced a man in the back in the early afternoon yesterday, fleeing the Yonge St.-Orchardview Blvd. area shortly after.

Police say he then approached another victim near Eglinton Ave. W. and Bathurst St. and stabbed him several times with a pen.

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"It gets better: Two of the charges for Mauricio Antonio Delgado−Cruz are 'Fail To Comply Recognizance.'"

Is 17 people travelling to Quebec City on the city's dime the kind of services Torontonians are in need of? Mayor David Miller never mentioned this junket when he was ramming through his new tax reforms last year.

And here we were thinking the City of Toronto was dirt poor -- you know, we must help bail these turkeys out.

Turns out, during an era where there was fear of not making budget, the city fathers miraculously found $41,854 to cover expenses for 17 people to go to beautiful old Quebec.

-- LOS ANGELES -- Dave Freeman, co-author of “100 Things to Do Before You Die,” a travel guide and ode to odd adventures that inspired readers and imitators, died after hitting his head in a fall at his home.

-- PRINCETON, NJ -- It's official: Barack Obama has received no bounce in voter support out of his selection of Sen. Joe Biden to be his vice presidential running mate.

Say it ain't so, Joe!

Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 23-25, the first three-day period falling entirely after Obama's Saturday morning vice presidential announcement, shows 46% of national registered voters backing John McCain and 44% supporting Obama, not appreciably different from the previous week's standing for both candidates.

This is the first time since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, though, that McCain has held any kind of advantage over Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.

The Biden episode merits revisiting because as acts of plagiarism go, it was spectacular, and because it points to other dicey chapters in his life.

To know Biden in full, you must appreciate his parts.

And guess what?

It wasn't the first time he'd done it.

If you give Biden the benefit of the doubt—and I don't—you'd expect that such a calamitous "mistake" from his youth would have seared into his mind the importance of keeping his mitts off of other people's words.

-- OTTAWA -- “The country must have a government that can function during a time of economic uncertainty, and if it's not this government, or not this Parliament, the public will have an opportunity to decide whom.”

“The opposition parties have been threatening and or demanding an election for some time, so I think if that is eventually where we have to go, I don't think they will at this point be able to say they're the least bit surprised.”

-- Pyongyang -- North Korea says it has halted work to disable its main nuclear reactor. Official media in Pyongyang blame Washington for the move and warn the government may restart its nuclear program, breaking international promises to dismantle it.

The Vancouver-based organization behind the city's controversial supervised-injection site hopes to purchase a piece of land where recovering hard-core addicts could take care of horses as part of a long-term recovery program geared toward those using its supervised-injection site and detox facilities.

With the whole health-care system imploding... how about we spend resources on people... who actually care if they live or die?

Party officials will be hoping the Kennedy magic will help to heal rifts that remain between the supporters of Senator Obama and his rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton.

I guess I'm just a little unclear why anybody would look to this guy to walk their dog... never mind heal any rifts.

Ted Kennedy's own tilt for the presidency foundered in 1980, but his career was forever marked down for his role in the death of a campaign volunteer, Mary Jo Kopechne, a year after Bobby's killing.

After leaving a party he drove off a bridge on the Massachusetts island of Chappaquiddick and left the scene of the accident, failing to report it to the police for several hours. Ms Kopechne was trapped in the car and drowned.

25 August 2008

-- NEW HAVEN -- The fighting started this week when Coach Wilfred Vidro refused a directive by league officials to replace 9-year-old pitcher Jericho Scott, whose pitching they say is so hard, fast and accurate that it might frighten or discourage other players.

So now the nanny state's gonna step in and mess with a fourth grader's proud accomplishment? Whatever's going on here... and there's talk it involves another team sponsored by the league president... it's just wrong.

Vidro said Saturday, “There’s no such thing as any kid pitching too hard. ... Let him play and your kid is going to get better.”

On Saturday, with no other youth teams in sight, Jericho’s team took on the parents instead. And their winning streak continued, 7-5.

Obama officials said a key purpose of the convention is to give voters a better sense of the candidate’s biography and roots. A film that appeared to be a biography of Obama was playing silently in the Pepsi Center Sunday afternoon.

In Wisconsin Sunday, Obama said he hoped convention viewers would conclude, “He’s sort of like us. He comes from a middle-class background, went to school on scholarships. He and his wife had to figure out child care and how to start a college fund for their kids.”

-- DENVER, Colorado (CNN) -- Hillary Clinton learned Friday she would not be Barack Obama’s running mate by a close associate and later that day spoke directly to Obama, according to a senior Obama aide and a Democratic official.

The associate was asked by the Obama campaign to inform Clinton she was not his running mate before it was publicly announced. It is not clear what Clinton and Obama talked about in the private conversation that took place later.

"Ladies and gentlemen, your kitchen table is like mine. You sit there at night...after you put the kids to bed and you talk, you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It's a pretty hard experience.

"He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at!"

John McCain - Republican

"I spent 22 years in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things."

"As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi."

...you start to remind people of a junkie who can't scare up his connection... it's all over...

"One thing is sure," said Dion. "The parliament is working. The parliament is not dysfunctional. This is full improvisation, and it shows panic from the Prime Minister."

It's showin' panic from somebody... that's for sure.

**********

RELATED: As Stephen Taylor said last week...

"The leader of the opposition started his press conference by responding indirectly to the Prime Minister’s ultimatum given at the Conservative caucus retreat in Lévis, Quebec when the PM said that Mr. Dion has to 'fish or cut bait.'"

"Dion made reference to fishing, cutting the fish, eating the fish and fishing for victory… or something."

**********

FROM THE COMMENTS:

"Dion and the Liberals are talking trash about everything the Tories are doing - how the CPC policies are taking Canada in the wrong direction and that Harper should be stopped soon and now - BUT Dion has to now come out and say that Parliament is working effectively and should continue on if he doesn't want an election."

-- ISLAMABAD (AFP) -- Pakistan's fragile ruling coalition was at risk of being pulled apart on Monday, setting the stage for a major political showdown two weeks before the country's lawmakers choose a new president.

Former premier Nawaz Sharif, head of the second-largest party in the coalition, has laid down a Monday deadline for the reinstatement of judges sacked by Pervez Musharraf, who resigned as president last week.

The political bickering has also underlined concerns for Pakistan's stability as the country tries to keep a lid on Islamic militants from the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Nearly 100 people were killed in suicide bombings last week alone. Pakistan Taliban say the bombings were carried out in response to a military campaign against them -- and have threatened more attacks to come.

-- ISLAMABAD -- Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif pulled his party out of the ruling coalition on Monday, deepening a political crisis that has diverted government attention from pressing security and economic problems.

The move came just a week after the coalition parties had celebrated the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf in the face of the coalition's threat to impeach him.

The PPP is reluctant to restore the judges partly because of concern the deposed chief justice might take up challenges to an amnesty granted to Mr. Zardari and other party leaders from graft charges last year, analysts say.

Before Mr. Musharraf sacked them, the judges — the former chief justice in particular — were quite willing to challenge his government on the legality of various decisions, a tendency the PPP may not view with enthusiasm now that it governs.

24 August 2008

The latest, released by the campaign early Sunday, features clips of Ms. Clinton during the primary battle saying critical things about Mr. Obama, including, "Senator Obama's campaign has become increasingly negative."

A voiceover announcer says, “She won millions of votes but isn't on the ticket. Why?" "For speaking the truth."

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, mentioned often as a potential No. 2 to Mr. McCain, said Sunday that Mr. Obama's choice of Mr. Biden had undermined one of the key messages of Mr. Obama's campaign, that he is an agent of change.

“Now you pick someone who is a consummate Washington insider, who was elected to the U.S. Senate when Barack Obama and I were 12 years old,” Mr. Pawlenty said in a conference call with reporters. “Where's the change?”

"Senator Obama has made a choice more out of weakness than strength. It is quite clear [that] the strong choice would have been Hillary Clinton. The obvious choice would have been Hillary Clinton."

"She had 50 percent of the Democratic vote [in the primaries]; Obama had 50 percent of the Democratic vote."

**********

LAST WORD: Let's take a little trip...

...back to the day Joe Biden launched his own presidential campaign...

Biden is taking some heat for comments he made to the New York Observer, in which he said of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a rival for the nomination: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

"If a Republican had said this, we'd have a national outpouring of grief over the residual ignorance and racial insensitivity in our country, and the guy would be in sensitivity training until around about the time John Kerry is elected president."

In what is being hailed as the biggest show of force this year in the Taliban stronghold, Canadian and Afghan forces pushed through the central part of Zhari, battling with insurgents and confiscating weapons caches and a "significant amount" of materials used for building improvised explosive devices.

The three-day campaign, code-named Op Timis Preem, kicked off Thursday morning with a pre-emptive early-morning air strike on a known insurgent command-and-control centre in western Pashmul.

Two insurgent commanders were suspected to have been operating there and, while no confirmation has been made yet, they are believed to have been killed in the strike.

B.C.-based organized crime groups are controlling the sale of methamphetamine across Canada and abroad, according to Criminal Intelligence Service Canada's annual report.

Meth production in the province was up in 2007 "primarily to meet expanding international market consumption," said the report, which marks trends in organized crime across the country.

But, but, but... isn't drug abuse a victimless crime?

The resulting drug-gang violence that has ripped through Metro Vancouver in recent months is a hallmark of the crime groups, the report said.

"Violence and intimidation are used to solidify or further a crime group's involvement within a criminal market. It is usually directed either externally against criminal rivals or internally within their own organization to maintain discipline," it said.

Not to mention the myriad criminal acts committed by the, uh... clients themselves.

The Crazy Part: The part where the family tree of every living creature on Earth collides at a single point on a single day in the past, making you related to Hitler as well as every insect you’ve ever killed.What It Says: We’re all familiar with the basics of evolution: that a munificent monkey-goddess birthed us all from Her banana-scented womb. But there are some lesser-discussed implications of natural selection that are just plain weird.

Furthermore, large chunks of the human genome are thought to be ancient retroviruses that managed to transcribe themselves into our DNA and have spent the remainder of their days happily clambering up and down our nucleotides like the McDuck children on a mansion banister.

Basically your cells are millions of individual organisms, all huddled together in a you-shaped beehive.

A court in Saudi Arabia is reported to be preparing to hear a plea for divorce from an eight-year-old girl who has been married off to a man in his 50s.

The Saudi newspaper al-Watan said the girl had been married off to the man by her father without her knowledge.

**********

LAST WORD:

Later, he would get to the touchier part, about how the minute changes in organisms that drive biological change arise spontaneously, without direction. And how a struggle for existence among naturally varying individuals has helped to generate every species, living and extinct, on the planet.

23 August 2008

...is a short drive away from Manfred's village, deep in the Harz mountains.

This is the spot where Manfred's relatives, dating back 3,000 years, were buried. The 3,000-year-old skeletons were in such good condition that anthropologists at the University of Goettingen managed to extract a sample of DNA. That was then matched to two men living nearby: Uwe Lange, a surveyor, and Manfred Huchthausen, a teacher.

The party also announced the release of a new television commercial by U.S. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, called "Biden."

The video shows Biden on TV news programs criticizing Obama, and in an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," saying he considered McCain (R-Ariz.) a friend and could run with him for president.

-- LOS ANGELES -- Immigration authorities on Friday ended a trial offer not to jail illegal immigrants who had been ordered to leave the country if they surrendered at government offices.

In the three weeks that the federal immigration agency tested the program in a handful of cities, only eight people came forward.

There are 457,000 “fugitive aliens” who would have been eligible for the program, he said, and about 30,000 in or near the cities in the program, which was promoted largely in the Spanish-language news media.

Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, the man charged with handling London's 2012 Olympic security preparations, is suing his employers for $2.3 million on racial and religious grounds, according to the British Broadcasting Corp., which did not cite a source for its report.

Mr. Ghaffur, born in Uganda to parents of Pakistani descent, joined Manchester's police force in 1974. He switched to the Metropolitan Police in 1999 and rose to assistant commissioner — the force's third-highest position — in 2001.

It took nearly seven months — or 205 days on average — for criminal charges to be resolved in Ontario courtrooms last year, up from 176 days in 2000 and 115 days in 1992, government statistics show.

While reducing appearances is a good start, Ontario courtrooms are still starving for more provincial resources, said Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory.

“There are lawyers and others who are gaming the system, sometimes perhaps at the instruction of their clients, to seek out delays for as long as possible so that the day of reckoning is postponed as long as possible,” he said.

“I think we’ve got to crack down on both of those. We’ve got to supply the resources and stop people from gaming the system, and I think that’ll make a big difference.”

22 August 2008

According to Berg, he filed the suit--just days before the DNC are to hold its nominating convention in Denver--for the health of the Democratic Party.

"I filed this action at this time," Berg stated, "to avoid the obvious problems that will occur when the Republican Party raises these issues after Obama is nominated."

This is just another nuisance nutcase, right?

Phillip Berg, the filing attorney, is a former gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA) County, former member of the Democratic State Committee, and former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania.

The two classmates from New York's Trinity school collected and sent off 60 fish samples to the University of Guelph in Canada. Of 56 samples that could be identified by a four-year-old DNA identification technique, 14 were mislabeled.

In all cases, the fish was labeled as a more costly type, apparently ruling out simple chance. It was the first known student use of DNA barcoding technology in a public market.

"It bears on a number of issues -- food safety, fraud and protection of endangered species," said Bob Hanner of Guelph, who oversaw the analysis of samples. Other imports, such as meat, could also benefit from DNA checks.